A couple of years ago we started a home theatre setup - nothing too flash but not a cheapo Home-Theatre-in-a-Box for $999 either.  We started with an Onkyo TX-SR602 receiver and a pair of B&W DM309 floorstanding speakers. Listening to a few different brands, we chose the B&W’s because the treble wasn’t overly harsh sounding to us. They have since served us well, and we decided to finish the rest of the setup when we bought our house.

Last week we decided to have a look for the rest of the stuff - and found that where we bought the speakers from was listing the remainder (rears, centre, sub) as clearance stock, with hardly any left. We bolted down to the store and got an LCR3 centre speaker, the matching one for the fronts we had. We got it for less than half price as it was the last one but it was obviously a display model - it was a bit dirty and scuffed on the cabinet. Still, the speaker cones looked fine and it sure sounds OK, so it was a bargain.

We looked around at other stores and bought the rears (DM303) and a subwoofer (ASW300) too, and have now been going through our DVD collection listening to movies in full, 5.1 surround sound. The difference is amazing - I now wish we had done it earlier. Oh well, it has worked out just fine. 

One thing I wanted to do was build some speakers in kit form from theloudspeakerkit.com, but Mrs Bort wouldn’t have a bar of it… I guess Ill have to build a set of M4s up here for the PC, and buy a cheapo 2 channel amp to drive them. Dick Smith Electronics had one that got rave reviews, but sadly it has been discontinued and replaced with a 5.1 amp that is nowhere near as good.